----------------------------------------> Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 03:00:43 -0500> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [MD] "100% confident">> David -->>> There are several key misconceptions at work in your questions here.>> The "unknown" you refer to is only conceptually or intellectually unknown>> but it is known in a different way. It's a distinct category of empirical>> reality, one usually overlooked or dismissed as unimportant by traditional>> philosophy - even traditional empiricists. This conceptually unknown is>> what Pirsig calls the pre-intellectual experience and what James calls>> pure experience. Dewey talks about it in terms of the unique "peculiar>> quality" of the total situation. It is accounted for in the MOQ and is>> called>> dynamic quality. The subsequent discussions about this experience is an>> experience of a different sort. In the MOQ this would be called static>> quality,>> hopefully and more specifically, static intellectual quality. James also>> uses>> the terms static and dynamic but what makes that so interesting, I think,>> is that Pirsig arrived at these terms independently and only later>> discovered>> the parallel.>>
Ham said to dmb: You're right in that what Pirsig and James call "pre-intellectual" or "pure" experience is experience of a different sort. In fact, it is not experience at all. Experience is always conceptual (i.e., intellectually and objectively perceived). As a psychologist, James should have been more precise in his epistemological terminology. This is why I refer to pure Value as pre-intellectual "sensibility" rather than experience. dmb replies: That simply doesn't make sense. How can "sensibility" be counted as something other than an experience? And the assertion that all experience is conceptual defies the fact that infants have non-conceptual experiences every day. Contemporary psychologist will tell you that the subject-object distinction is formed in this period of life as the child acquires language. James was arguably the finest psychologist who ever lived and was way ahead of his time in indentifying these pre-intellectual experiences and taking them seriously. You're free to disagree, of course, but that disagreement has to make some sense. How can pure experience be an experience of a different sort and also not an experience at all? How can sensiblity be known if not in experience? Your comments here are logically impossible, unsupported by facts or reason and is otherwise downright goofy. Ham said: I disagree only with your statement that Oneness can be known empirically. Only experience is empirical. The sense of pure Value is the essence of man, but it is not Oneness. The individual turns value into experience -- actually "abstracting" it differentially for itself, thereby reducing (negating) its essential otherness (the essent) to objective being. dmb quotes Pirsig from ZAMM, page 126: "In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you percieve are undivided. To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened." This is the experience of Oneness and this experience has been reported by people from all over the planet for thousands of years. We can debate the meaning of it, but simply denying that there is such an experience is the worst kind of ignorance, the willful kind. And if this is not an experience, then what would you be "abstracting" in order to turn it into an experience? Again, your assertions are logically impossible and just plain goofy. _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts! Play Star Shuffle: the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
